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Mandarin (linguistics)
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:''This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. For the standardized official spoken Chinese language (Putonghua/Guoyu), see
Standard Mandarin.''
{{Infobox Language
|name=Mandarin
|nativename=北方話 ''BÄ›ifÄ?nghuà ''
|familycolor=Sino-Tibetan
|states=
China (the
People's Republic of China and the
Republic of China),
Singapore,
Indonesia,
Malaysia, and other Chinese communities around the world
|region=Most of northern and southwestern
China; widely understood in the rest of China
|speakers=867.2 million
|rank=1
|fam2=
Chinese language Chinese
|nation=in
Standard Mandarin standardized form:
People's Republic of China PRC,
Republic of China ROC,
Singapore,
United Nations
|agency=in the PRC: [http://www.china-language.gov.cn/ various agencies]
in the ROC:
Mandarin Promotion Councilin Singapore:
Promote Mandarin Council/
Speak Mandarin Campaign [http://mandarin.org.sg/html/home.htm]
|iso1=zh|iso2b=chi|iso2t=zho|iso3=cmn}}
'''Mandarin''', or '''Beifanghua''' ({{zh-cpl|c=北方話|p=BÄ›ifÄ?nghuà |l=Northern Dialect(s)}}), or '''Guanhua''' ({{zh-tspl|t=官話 |s=官è¯? |p=GuÄ?nhuà |l=official speech}}) is a category of related
Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. When taken as an separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the Mandarin dialects have more speakers than any other language.
In English, Mandarin can refer to two distinct concepts:
*to
Standard Mandarin (''Putonghua/Guoyu''), which is based on the
Beijing dialect Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing. Standard Mandarin functions as the official spoken language of the
People's Republic of China, the official spoken language of the
Republic of China (Taiwan), and one of the official spoken languages of
Singapore. "Chinese" — ''de facto'', Standard Mandarin — is one of the six official languages of the
United Nations.
*to all of the Mandarin dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China; a term used by linguists.
In everyday use, "Mandarin" refers usually to just Standard Mandarin (''Putonghua''/''Guoyu''). The broader group of Mandarin dialects consists of diverse related dialects, some less mutually intelligible than others. It is a grouping defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example
Sichuan dialect or
Northeast China dialect, and consider it distinct from "[Standard] Mandarin"; they may not recognize that it is in fact classified by linguists as a form of "Mandarin" in a broader sense. Nor is there a common "Mandarin" identity based on language; instead, there are strong regional identities centered around individual Mandarin dialects, due to the wide geographical distribution of its speakers.
This article will focus on the wider sense of Mandarin — a large grouping of diverse northern and southwestern Chinese dialects, rather than just
Standard Mandarin.
Like all other varieties of
Chinese language Chinese, there is significant
dispute as to whether Mandarin is a
language or a
dialect. See
Identification of the varieties of Chinese for more on this issue.
History
The present main divisions of the Chinese language developed out of
Old Chinese and
Middle Chinese.
Most Chinese living in a broad arc, from the north-east (
Manchuria) to the south-west (
Yunnan), use various Mandarin dialects as their
home language. The prevalence of linguistic homogeneity (i.e. Mandarin) throughout northern China is largely the result of geography, namely the plains of north China. By contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China have promoted linguistic diversity. The presence of Mandarin in southwest China is largely due to a plague in the 12th century in
Sichuan. This plague, which may have been related to the
black death, depopulated the area, leading to later settlement from north China.
There is no clear dividing line where
Middle Chinese ends and Mandarin begins; however, the
ZhÅ?ngyuán YÄ«nyùn (ä¸åŽŸéŸ³éŸµ), a
rhyme book from the
Yuan Dynasty, is widely regarded as an important milestone in the history of Mandarin. In this rhyme book we see many characteristic features of Mandarin, such as the reduction and disappearance of final
stop consonants and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese
tonal language tones.
Until the mid-
20th century, most Chinese living in southern China spoke only their local language. However, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various Chinese languages, Beijingese Mandarin became dominant at least during the officially
Manchu-speaking
Qing Empire. Since the 17th century, the Empire had set up
Orthoepy Academies ({{zh-sp|s=æ£éŸ³ä¹¦é™¢|p=ZhèngyÄ«n ShÅ«yuà n}}) in an attempt to make pronunciation conform to the Beijing standard. But these attempts had little success.
This situation changed with the widespread introduction of Standard Mandarin as the national language, to be used in education, the media, and formal situations in both the PRC and the ROC, but not in Hong Kong. As a result, Standard Mandarin is now spoken fluently by most people in
Mainland China and
Taiwan, along with numerous regional/local dialects. In
Hong Kong, due to its colonial and linguistic history, the language of education, the media, formal speech and everyday life remains the local
Cantonese (linguistics) Cantonese but Standard Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.
Name and classification
The
English language English term comes from the
Portuguese language Portuguese ''mandarim'' (from
Malay language Malay ''menteri'' [http://dictionary.bhanot.net/index.html] from
Sanskrit ''mantrin-'', meaning
Political minister minister); it is a translation of the Chinese term ''GuÄ?nhuà '' ({{zh-ts|t=官話|s=官è¯?}}), which literally means the language of the mandarins (imperial magistrates). The term ''GuÄ?nhuà '' is often considered archaic by Chinese speakers of today, though it is used sometimes by linguists as a collective term to refer to all varieties and dialects of Mandarin, not just
standard Mandarin. Another term commonly used to refer to all varieties of Mandarin is ''BÄ›ifÄ?nghuà '' ({{zh-st|s=北方è¯?|t=北方話}}), or the dialect(s) of the North.
Standard Mandarin
''Main article:
Standard Mandarin''
From an official point of view, there are two versions of
Standard Mandarin, since the
People's Republic of China Beijing government refers to that on the Mainland as ''Putonghua'', whereas the
Republic of China Taipei government refers to their official language as ''Kuo-yü'' (''Guoyu'' in
pinyin).
Technically, both Putonghua and Guoyu base their
phonology on the
Beijing dialect, though Putonghua also takes some elements from other sources. Comparison of dictionaries produced in the two areas will show that there are few substantial differences. However, both versions of "school" Standard Mandarin are often quite different from the Mandarin dialects that are spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither is identical to even
Beijing dialect. Putonghua and Guoyu also differ from the
Beijing dialect in vocabulary, grammar, and usage.
It is important to note that the terms "Putonghua" and "Guoyu" refer to speech, and hence the difference in the use of
Simplified Chinese simplified characters and
Traditional Chinese traditional characters is not usually considered to be a difference between these two concepts.
Dialects
Image:Y-NL400b.gif thumb|right|250px|Geographical distribution of Mandarin and other Chinese languages.
''Main article:
Mandarin dialects''
There are regional variations in Mandarin. This is manifested in two ways:
# Various dialects of Mandarin cover a huge area containing nearly a billion people. As a result, there are pronounced regional variations in
pronunciation,
vocabulary and
grammar encountered as one moves from place to place. These regional differences are as pronounced as (or more so than) the regional versions of the
English language found in
England,
Scotland,
Ireland,
Australia,
Canada, and the
United States.
#
Standard Mandarin has been promoted very actively by the
People's Republic of China PRC, the
Republic of China ROC, and
Singapore as a second language. As a result, native speakers of both Mandarin varieties and non-Mandarin Chinese varieties frequently flavor it with a strong infusion of the speech sounds of their native tongues.
Dialects of Mandarin can be subdivided into eight categories:
Beijing dialect Beijing Mandarin,
Northeastern Mandarin,
Ji Lu Mandarin,
Jiao Liao Mandarin,
Zhongyuan Mandarin,
Lan Yin Mandarin,
Southwestern Mandarin, and
Jianghuai Mandarin.
Jin (linguistics) Jin is sometimes considered the ninth category of Mandarin (others separate it from Mandarin altogether).
In both Mainland China and Taiwan, Mandarin in predominantly Han Chinese areas is taught by immersion starting in elementary school. After the second grade, the entire educational system is in Mandarin, except for local language classes that have been taught for a few hours each week in Taiwan starting in the mid-1990s.
However, the era of mass education in Mandarin has not erased these earlier regional differences. In the south, the interaction between Mandarin and local variations of Chinese has produced local versions of the "Northern" language that are rather different from that official standard Mandarin in both pronunciation and grammar.
Phonology
:''See
standard Mandarin#Phonology standard Mandarin for a description of Standard Mandarin
phonology and
dialects of Mandarin#Phonology dialects of Mandarin for an overview of the phonologies of Mandarin dialects.''
Mandarin, like most Chinese dialects/languages, is
syllable timing syllable timed, as opposed to many Western languages, including English, which are
stress timing stress timed.
The set of syllables in Chinese is very small, since each syllable has to be constructed after the pattern: "optional initial consonant followed by vowel followed by optional final consonant (which is either an
offglide or /n/), plus tone." Not every syllable that is possible according to this rule actually exists in Mandarin, and in practice there are only a few hundred syllables. For example, Mandarin lacks a final 'm' sound. People with a heavy Mandarin
Non-native pronunciations of English accent would often read 'time' as 'tie-mm', or may even pronounce the 'm' more like 'n.'
Vocabulary
There are more polysyllabic words in Mandarin than in other varieties of Chinese, except
Shanghainese which has more polysyllabic words than Mandarin. This is partly because Mandarin has undergone many more sound changes than have southern varieties of Chinese, and has needed to deal with many more
homophones — usually by forming new words via compounding, or by adding
affixes such as ''lao-'', ''-zi'', ''-(e)r'', and ''-tou''. There are also a small number of words that have been polysyllabic since Old Chinese, such as ''hudie'' (butterfly).
The
pronouns in Mandarin are wǒ (我) "I", nǐ (你) "you", and tā (他/她) "he/she", with -men (们) added for the group. Dialects of Mandarin agree with each other quite consistently on this, but not with other varieties of Chinese (e.g.
Shanghainese has 侬 ''non'' "you" and 伊 ''yi'' "he/she").
In addition, there is zánmen (咱们), a "we" that includes the listener, and nÃn (您), a deferential way of saying "you". A comparable example would be ''Sie'' and ''du'' in German.
Other morphemes that Mandarin dialects tend to share are aspect and mood particles, such as -le (了), -zhe (着), and -guo (过). Other Chinese varieties tend to use different words in some of these contexts (e.g. Cantonese 咗 and ç·Š).
Due to contact with
Central Asian cultures, Mandarin has some loanwords from
Altaic languages not present in other varieties of Chinese, for example hútong (胡同) "alley".
List of Chinese dialects Southern Chinese varieties have borrowed more from
Tai or
Austronesian languages.
References
* {{cite book | author=Chao, Yuen Ren | title=A Grammar of Spoken Chinese | publisher=University of California Press | year=1968 | id=ISBN 0-520-00219-9 }}
* {{cite book | last = Norman | first = Jerry | title=Chinese | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1988 | id=ISBN 0-521-29653-6 }}
* {{cite book | last = Ramsey | first = S. Robert | title=The Languages of China | publisher=Princeton University Press | year=1987 | id=ISBN 0-691-01468-X }}
See also
*
Chinese grammar
*
Mandarin Swadesh list Swadesh list of Mandarin Chinese words
External links
{{Chinese language}}
{{book}}
-
Ethnologue report on Mandarin
-
Chinese language source materials used as the basis for the map and chart supplied above.
Category:Chinese language
Category:Tonal languages
Category:Mandarin (linguistics)
bg:Мандарин
da:Mandarin (sprog)
de:Nordchinesischer Dialekt
es:Chino mandarÃn
fr:Mandarin
he:×ž× ×“×¨×™× ×™×ª
id:Bahasa Mandarin
ja:ä¸å›½å®˜è©±
la:Lingua_Sinensis_Mandarinica
nl:Mandarijn (taal)
pl:Języki mandaryńskie
pt:Mandarim
simple:Mandarin language
sv:mandarin (lingvistik)
th:ภาษาจีน�ลาง
tr: Mandarin
zh:官�
category:Chinese language
zh:category:官話
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